The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (utgåvan 2002)

I enjoyed the humour in this book, the references to things 'in the real world'.

I didn't panic and I have a towel.

After this big one, I'm quite fed up with the confusing act of travelling in time and space. I regularly lost track of the narrative, but then decided that I'd better not try to track and just take the world the book was talking about 'as is'. And that helped a lot to read it till the end. ( )

It's tough to know where to even start here. I first read these over 10 years ago and had been meaning to revisit them for some time. If I can get a bit haughty for a minute, David Mitchell said, regarding If on a winter's night a traveller, "however breathtakingly inventive a book is, it is only breathtakingly inventive once", and I think that's exactly the thing that sticks in my craw rereading these. Once you've gotten all the jokes (and don't get me wrong, Adams can still get a chuckle out of me after all this time), what you're left with tends to vary wildly. The threads connecting the books are tenuous at best (heck, even the threads keeping the individual books in and of themselves together are tenuous - I'm pretty sure the character Adams meant to be the main villain of book 2 vanishes halfway through) which makes them light and fun but also maddening to read in sequence like this.

The other thing that frustrates me, revisiting this, is the unevenness of the fourth and fifth book compared to the first three. I remember disliking the fourth book a lot the first time I read through these - I am happy to say I was a stupid little idiot, because it's tremendously excellent. Unfortunately, all of the great development there is squandered in the mean-spirited, bleak fifth book. (I feel a little guilty writing this, seeing on Wikipedia now that it was written at a bad time in Adams's life, but I feel like it'd be dishonest to say anything else.)

All of that aside though, these are still tremendous fun. The interspersed segments of the Guide in the first novel are great (although I'm glad they were basically discarded in later stories as they would have worn out their welcome fast). The extended Pink Floyd joke in the second book is great. The third book's ending comes a bit out of nowhere, but I mourn for the loss of Adams on Doctor Who, because the climax is the best Doctor Who ending that's not in a Doctor Who episode. It's great, it's just that on some level I want to get back the feeling I had the first time I read these, when the jokes were new and I didn't have them all bound up in a single volume. Which, now that I think about it, maybe Mostly Harmless was more on the ball than I thought. ( )

I've heard a lot about these books the past few years, even saw the seperate volumes at a book sale, but decided not to purchase them (yet). Three months later, I wanted to buy the boxset, but opted for the omnibus instead, for some or other reason.

I had been postponing the reading of this brick of a books (815 pages) quite often, but in the end, you have to go through with it.

This omnibus contains 6 books:

1) "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" - the classic that started it all.
2) "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe"
3) "Life, The Universe And Everything"
4) "So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish"
5) "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe" (bonus story)
6) "Mostly Harmless"

It all started really well with "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy". As this is my first encounter with Douglas Adams's works, I find his writing style smooth, and I loved the witty and fun stuff. Plus, the story's ending was quite open, I found, hence the need for "The Restaurant". And this one contains more action, plus the required funny moments. However, the proof-reading could have been done a bit more profoundly, as here and there a comma is missing, which makes the reading a little less slow. Other than that, no complaints. Oh yes, Marvin rocks! That little, depressed robot.

"Life, The Universe and Everything" is, compared to the other two, rather mediocre. Not as funny, and as I read it directly after the first two, it became a drag to read it, mainly around halfway. After that things got a bit better. But not enough to increase my enthousiasm.

And the reading pleasure went more downhill in "So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish", which was good for a good portion. With regards to the bonus story, "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe": What sh*t is this? It's not a story, but an extract. Or rather, reads/feels like one. Barely 10 pages long. Dafuq? It's supposed to be a prelude to the series, but I fail to see any connection with the proper books, and this little story is really very short. It doesn't have a beginning or an end, not in the proper sense. Like I said, more like an extract. I feel cheated.

Last but not least, "Mostly Harmless". This one started pretty alright, also has its funny moments, some nice action pieces, lots of imagination (of course), but the ending? What is that? It is as if mr. Adams quickly needed to round things off, ran out of wits and imagination, didn't see the grand structure of the story anymore and just wrote something to get it over with. So, by itself, it's not that bad a story, but in the context of the series, it's another mediocre book, this time with, again, a bad ending.

In short: I'm glad I finally read this classic book, for it is indeed a good one. Or rather, the first two are very good, 3 and 4 are less good, but in the total picture still worth reading. The bonus story is not even worth mentioning, actually, and the last book is/was milking out the concept (read: wasn't that necessary). However, memorable and commendable is the fun stuff, the style, and the occasional psychological, and scientific elements. ( )

I am rereading Doulas Adams' Hitchhiker series and enjoying it just as much as the first time. Great fun! ( )

Douglas Adams' mind is not like other people's. His "Hitchhiker" stories are fun, silly, complex and full of wisdom on an infinite scale. His characters go on galactic explorations to find the answers to life's ineffable questions. The meaning of life? Bah! add the universe and everything to the mix then add extra dimensions and you get near the depth of the questions being raised. If you read this review, I can only say "we apologize for the inconvenience" ( )